Jacob Thorpe: EA Sports’ College Football 25 was worth the wait, but we missed out on some great Cougars along the way
Despite what my colleagues in the news section might tell you, historians will remember July 2024 for one reason: the return of the EA Sports college football video game.
Don’t believe me? I saw that the billionaire who owns Twitter has pledged to give $45 million a month to one of the candidates running for president. Not a bad sum, I guess, but a pittance compared to the $220 million gamers reportedly spent on the $100 deluxe preorder copy of the game so they could play it three days early.
I am one of those people who gladly paid the premium for a game I have been waiting for since the last edition came out a decade ago. And the developers rose to the challenge. The gameplay is solid, the unique traditions are incorporated and the stadiums are beautiful. I almost gasped (not really) the first time I saw WSU’s football operations building standing behind the end zone at Gesa Field. Felt like I was right back in Pullman.
But the more I play, the more I get the feeling that the timing of this stinks, and especially so for those of us living in the forgotten Pacific Northwest. Cougars and Huskies don’t have a lot in common these days, but both fanbases missed the party this time. I’m sure plenty of WSU and UW fans are building dynasties and recruiting five-star talents and all that, but the magic of these games is getting to take control of some of your favorite players – and so many for both schools graduated while this game was on hiatus.
Frankly, the biggest difference is that now the players in the game have the same names as their real-life counterparts and let’s be clear – in previous editions of the game you always knew who the players were supposed to be. The game developers would make just enough mistakes with the roster for plausible deniability, but the jersey numbers were usually the same and there was no mistaking UW QB No. 10 was a dead ringer for Jake Locker, etc.
Social media and newspaper columns across the county are flooded with celebrations of the game’s return. The rest of this one, however, is an acknowledgement of all we in the state of Washington missed out on.
UW’s 2023 offense. If this game had returned one year earlier, UW would have had one of the all-time great video game offenses. Three NFL receivers. An extremely accurate quarterback. A tough, effective 1,000-yard running back. And an award-winning offensive line giving players plenty of time to pick and choose which star skill player to use. One year later, the Huskies roster feels a lot more like playing with one of those automatic name generator teams from previous versions.
Luke Falk’s sustained success. It is tempting to reminisce about the unexpected superstars and wonder what it would be like to play as the indefatigable Gardner Minshew or gunslinging Anthony Gordon. The answer: surprisingly frustrating. The game bases player ratings on their expectations heading into the season, and so the aforementioned one-hit wonders are rarely acceptable facsimiles of their on-field selves. But a player like Falk who was one of the country’s best quarterbacks for multiple years, while playing on winning teams, would have certainly been highly rated in 2017, when the Cougars spent the entire season ranked in the Associated Press Top 25 poll.
Max Borghi and Hercules Mata’afa. Had there been a video game in 2020, Max Borghi would have been one of the most electrifying players around following his 1,400 yards from scrimmage and 16 touchdowns the year before. Elusive running backs who can catch the ball do particularly well in video games, and those years WSU had one of the best. Similarly, strong and fast defensive linemen who can rack up sacks and end opposing drives are coveted even more by gamers than coaches, and it’s a shame WSU fans missed out on Mata’afa.
The Chris Petersen defenses. Nothing leads to more broken controllers than the notoriously difficult defenses inherent to video games like NCAA Football and Madden, where only the best defenses seem able to get a stop on the harder settings. Well, under Petersen UW had some of those defenses. With players like Vita Vea clogging up the middle, Byron Murphy and Trent McDuffie at cornerback, and Budda Baker preventing the deep pass, UW gamers would have been sure of getting off the field quickly.